AA.VV.

Via Appia. Villa dei Quintili. Santa Maria Nova

The Villa dei Quintili and the Santa Maria Nova estate are located at the fifth mile of the Via Appia, where the mounds of the Horatii and Curiatii are preserved near a sacred precinct. The villa is one of the largest imperial residences in the Roman suburb, belonging to the two brothers of Greek origin, Sextus Quintilius Condianus and Sextus Quintilius Valerius Maximus, consuls in Rome in 151 AD. It was then seized by the Emperor Commodus, following their alleged involvement in a conspiracy against him. The Santa Maria Nova estate, eith its farmhouse built over an ancient Roman building and its complex residential system – equipped with water tanks and thermal baths, interpreted in its earliest phase as accommodation for distinguished guests (hospitalia), later converted into a military garrison of the Imperial Villa. It has now been acquired by the state and today forms a single archaeological area open to the public. Recent excavations have given new life to this immense monumental complex, an integral part of one of the richest historical-monumental legacies of the ancient world, the Via Appia.